Metallica, Thin Lizzy Members to Appear in Phil Lynott Movie

Award-winning director Emer Reynolds announced she was working on the project, titled Phil Lynott: Songs for While I’m Away, though no completion or release date was given.

“The documentary will trace how a young black boy from working class 1950s Dublin became one of Ireland’s greatest rock stars as the lead singer of Thin Lizzy,” ScreenDaily reported. “Born in Birmingham to a Brazilian father and an Irish mother, he moved to Dublin as a teenager. He died aged just 36 in 1986. Phil Lynott: Songs for While I’m Away is being produced by Alan Maher and John Wallace of Ireland’s newly formed Cowtown Pictures with Peter Worsley of London-based music documentary specialists Eagle Rock Films for Globe Productions, part of Universal Music Group, with backing from Screen Ireland. Eagle Rock has international rights.”

James Hetfield of Metallica, Adam Clayton of U2, Thin Lizzy members Scott Gorham, Eric Bell, Darren Wharton and Midge Ure were listed as contributors, along with Suzi Quatro, Huey Lewis and others. “Having been a huge Thin Lizzy fan throughout my life, it’s an incredible honor to be bringing this celebratory and intimate portrait of lead singer and songwriter Philip Lynott to the big screen,” Reynolds said.

Speaking in 2011, Hetfield reflected on Lynott’s death. “You just wondered, ‘Why did God take such a creative person?’" he said. "But I think there was a purpose to it all, because the struggles that he wrote about – with drugs, drink, ethnicity, all of those things – they almost speak louder now he has passed. For me, going through the struggle with alcohol and addiction in general, just going back and listening to his lyrics, it’s like, ‘Wow, I know what he’s talking about now.’ I love that.”